The World Wide Web (WWW) is the multimedia aspect (part) of the Internet. The WWW has capability to display pages, graphics, sounds, and video animation through a variety of browsers. Other parts of the Internet include newsgroups (usenet), mailing lists, FTP (File Transfer Protocol), gopher, and e-mail (electronic mail). - Provided by Reference.com

11/2/11

Jazz is a musical form, often improvisational, developed by African-Americans and influenced by both European harmonic structure and African rhythmic complexity. It also is often characterized by its use of blues and speech intonations. Blues denotes a secular folk music of African-Americans. It has origins in the Mississippi Delta in the early 20th century. - Provided by Reference.com

11/3/11

Mammals have the ability of skeletal growth because of flexible epiphyses [pronounced: a pith a seas] (growth caps) found at the ends of the long bone shafts. The epiphyseal cartilages [growth plates] separate the epiphyses while bones are forming. The advent of puberty is signaled by an increase of sex hormones and at this point the growth plates begin to close. Once they are eliminated, the growth process totally stops. - Provided by Reference.com

11/4/11

Ionizers work by arcing a small current of electricity off a thin needle and into the air. The electrons bind to nearby air molecules and give them a negative charge. These negatively charged molecules are propelled or drift throughout the room and attract tiny pollutants such as smoke, dust, pollen, and aerosols. Evenutally, these bundles of pollutants become too heavy to remain airborne and settle onto the surfaces of the room. - Provided by Reference.com

11/5/11

The state fish of Hawaii is the HUMUHUMUNUKUNUKUAPUA'A, which is a form of trigger fish. It is actually not too hard to pronounce if you notice the repetition. HUMU - HUMU - NUKU - NUKU - APUA'A. - Provided by Reference.com

11/6/11

Although agencies that engage in this sort of practice protest otherwise, sending unsolicited faxes is illegal nationwide (under FCC rules), unless the sender and receiver have a 'prior business relationship' that implies permission to send. Even if this prior relationship exists, if the receiver specifically asks not to be faxed, the sender must stop transmitting faxes to that company. - Provided by Reference.com

11/7/11

Balls curve as a consequence of asymmetries in the resistance of the air through which they pass. The pitcher can throw the ball so the air pressure on one side of the ball is lower than on the opposite side. This is done by putting a spin on the ball as it leaves the pitcher's hand. The ball surface then changes the local air pressure by pushing more air molecules to one side, causing a relative air pressure difference near the ball. The ball then moves forward and also towards the direction of less air pressure, therefore curving the path of the ball. - Provided by Reference.com

11/8/11

Bears are three-gaited, meaning they walk, lope or gallop. It has been reported that a grizzly bear can run nearly as fast as a horse (33-34 mph) for a distance of 50 to 100 yards. This is definitely faster than a human being can run. The lope, slower than the gallop, is an easy, ground-covering, bounding gait that does not seem to tire the bear and can be maintained for a long time. - Provided by Reference.com

11/9/11

The golf tee was invented by George F. Grant of Boston, who obtained a patent on December 12, 1899, on a wooden tee with a tapering base portion and flexible tubular concave shoulder. - Provided by Reference.com

11/10/11

Researchers say that in Anglo-Saxon Britain, in the 5th and 6th centuries, boy babies were more prized than girls. The belief spread that evil spirits would visit the cradle and harm or carry off a boy child. Blue, a power color representing the sky, would scare away an evil spirit. Later, in Germany, a widespread legend held that girl babies sprang from a pink rose and it became customary to dress baby girls in pink. That custom merged with the British one of dressing boys in blue. - Provided by Reference.com

11/11/11

Today "God Bless America" is well known as a semi-official national anthem, but it was 22 years old before it was first heard in public. Irving Berlin wrote it during World War I, but it was not publicly sung until November 11, 1938, when Kate Smith introduced it on a radio broadcast - Provided by Reference.com

11/12/11

The largest city in area in the United States is Juneau, Alaska! With 2593.6 square miles it is much bigger than the second-largest, Anchorage (1697.6 square miles). The rest of the top ten are: Jacksonville City, FL; Butte-Silver Bow, MT; Oklahoma City; Houston; Nashville-Davidson, TN; Los Angeles; Phoenix; and Suffolk City, VA. - Provided by Reference.com

11/13/11

Spoons and knives were made and used in the earliest times and they are found among the artifacts of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, etc. Prehistoric implements used for cutting, hunting, and defense were fashioned from stone, especially flint; from obsidian, a volcanic glass; and from bones and shells. Forks, which originally had a single point, were made with two prongs by the Romans. Matching sets of spoons and forks in standard patterns were common by the mid-18th century. The modern tablespoon, with its stem ending in a rounded curve and turned downward, was adopted about 1760. Although by the late 17th century individual eating knives were no longer carried for ordinary use, sets consisting of knife, fork, spoon, and drinking vessel were made for travelers well into the 19th century. - Provided by Reference.com

11/14/11

The present system of color coding was developed by the railroads during World War I, though the use of these particular colors for the same meanings goes back further. Red, the color of blood, has been a danger signal since early times; even Roman legions used a red banner for Mars, the god of war. The other colors have changed over time. Originally red meant 'stop', green 'caution' and white 'go'. The white signal was easily confused with normal light, so it as changed. The railroads decided to drop white and make green 'go' and yellow 'caution', the latter presumably because it was readily visible and offered the most striking contrast to the other two colors. The first traffic signals (Cleveland 1914) used just red and green. In the early 1920s, in Detroit, they started using the three colors we use today. - Provided by Reference.com

11/15/11

Beer in root beer's case is a carbonated nonalcoholic or a fermented slightly alcoholic beverage with flavoring from roots or other plant parts. Root for root beer is sarsaparilla. - Provided by Reference.com

11/16/11

The belief that it is lucky to pick up a horseshoe comes from the idea that it was a protection against witches and evil generally. The legend is that Mars (iron) is the enemy of Saturn (God of the Witches); consequently they were nailed to the house door with two ends uppermost, so that the luck did not "run out." - Provided by Reference.com

11/17/11

The first train robbery took place on May 5, 1865, when an Ohio and Mississippi Railroad train en route from St. Louis, MO, to Cincinnati, OH, overturned at North Bend, OH and was robbed by looters. The first train robbery of a train in motion took place on October 6, 1866 on an Ohio and Mississippi Railroad train. - Provided by Reference.com

11/18/11

It takes 3650 peanuts to fill a 5-pound container of peanut butter. Half of all edible peanuts consumed in the US are used to make peanut butter. - Provided by Reference.com

11/19/11

The common, or northern, mockingbird (Mimus polyglottos) is well known as a mimic; it has been known to imitate the songs of 20 or more species within 10 minutes. - Provided by Reference.com

11/20/11

Carbonate sedimentary rocks, obviously laid down in an aquatic environment, have been dated to 1 billion years ago. They are the source of the salt in the ocean's waters. When the oceans formed, the high carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere at that time would have allowed a buildup of dissolved carbon dioxide in the water and made these early oceans acidic and capable of dissolving surface rocks that would add to the water's salt content. - Provided by Reference.com

11/21/11

In early times, people carried weapons in their right hands. When someone wanted to show another that they wished to be friendly, they extended an empty right hand showing that it held no weapon. To make sure that neither could suddenly draw a weapon, they grasped each other's hand firmly until sure they were in agreement. The actual shaking of the hands may have been for the purpose of dislodging any hidden weapons. - Provided by Reference.com

11/22/11

Self-government in America actually began in deep water aboard the Mayflower off Cape Cod on this day in 1620. This is when the Pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact for what they called 'a civil body politic,' settling matters of responsibility before they embarked on the job of settling in the new land. - Provided by Reference.com

11/23/11

The Straits of Magellan were discovered in 1520 by Ferdinand Magellan while he was trying to find an eastern route to the Moluccan Islands in the Pacific. From Spain, Magellan first sailed around South America, discovering the Straits of Magellan, and across the Pacific. Though he was killed in the Philippines, his ships continued westward to Spain, - Provided by Reference.com

11/24/11

Turkeys raised in the United States during 2011 is 248 million, up 2 percent from the number raised during 2010. The turkeys produced in 2010 together weighed 7.11 billion pounds and were valued at $4.37 billion. - Provided by USDA

11/25/11

Rap music as a musical form began among the youth of South Bronx, New York in the mid 1970's. Individuals such Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa were some of the early pioneers of the art form. The history of popular music in the 1970s and '80s is basically that of rock music, which, with its variants, including disco, punk, and rap music, spread throughout the world and became the standard musical idiom for young people in many countries. - Provided by Reference.com

11/26/11

It is estimated that millions of asteroids of boulder size exist in the solar system. These smaller objects are probably formed when larger asteroids collide. A few of them strike the Earth's surface in the form of meteorites. There are very few large asteroids; about 30 have a diameter of more than 200 km (124 miles). Ceres, the largest known minor planet, has a diameter of roughly 935 km (581 miles), and Pallas, the second in size, measures only 535 km (332 miles) across. Approximately 250 asteroids have a diameter of at least 100 km (62 miles). Asteroids this big would annihilate the Earth if they struck it. - Provided by Reference.com

11/27/11

Steel was first manufactured in May 1728 in Simsbury CT by Samuel Higley and Joseph Dewey. The first open-hearth furnace for making steel was built in 1868 in Trenton, NJ. It was the New Jersey Steel and Iron Company. The first Bessemer steel converter was used in 1864 at Eureka Iron and Steel Works. - Provided by Reference.com

11/28/11

Pierre and Marie Curie are the first and only husband and wife to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics (1903). - Provided by The World Almanac 2012

11/29/11

Seventy-five percent of all gold in circulation has been extracted since 1910. - Provided by RandomHistory.com

11/30/11

Seedless grapes still have tiny seeds that you cannot detect. If you want to dry seedless grapes: leave the grapes whole or cut in half for faster drying. If drying whole, dip in boiling water for 30 seconds to crack skins. No further pretreatment is necessary. Drying takes 24 to 48 hours in a dehydrator. Grapes are adequately dry when they have a raisin-like texture and no moisture in the center. - Provided by Reference.com